SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

134 Chapter 5: Writing Practices
he said: “In the west [scil. Palestine] the one verse (Exod 19:9) is divided into three verses”.’ This statement
follows an earlier dictum that ‘in the division of verses we are no experts either’ (Iˆnyayqb
alo ymn yqwspb).
What exactly constituted a verse in the prose sections of the Bible has not been determined.
The division into verses, that is rather uniform in the various textual witnesses, had its origin in
the oral tradition of Bible reading, as opposed to the written division into sections. The earliest
sound evidence for such a division is found in Qumran scrolls of two Bible translations (LXX,
Targum); later evidence is contained in the SP and Masoretic accents.
(3) Division between large sense units (sections)
a. Background
In the great majority of biblical and nonbiblical texts from the Judean Desert (not in the
documentary texts, for which see DJD II, XXVII, XXXVIII), as in most Greek texts from the
Hellenistic period (again not in documentary texts; see, e.g. Lewis, Bar Kochba), and in earlier
Aramaic texts from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, the text was subdivided into meaningful
units that were separated from one another by means of spacing. This system was imitated in the
Copper Scroll (3Q15).
In addition to the primary sources from antiquity, such as the Judean Desert texts, the
system of sense divisions can also be analyzed in such secondary sources as the ancient
translations of the Bible. These translations were made from texts such as those found in the
Judean Desert, and at least some translators transferred the sense divisions from the Hebrew
manuscripts to their translations. However, over the course of the transmission of these
translations, the original sense divisions were often obliterated (§ i).
The system of subdividing a text into larger sense units by means of spacing was used for the
transmission of many texts in antiquity, sacred and nonsacred, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Prior to the discovery of the Qumran texts, this system was often wrongly considered to be
characteristic of the transmission of only Hebrew Scripture, where the sections thus indicated
were named parashiyyot. The widespread use of such divisions was recognized long before the
discovery of the Qumran scrolls by L. Blau. 192 Unsurprisingly, in Qumran texts of all types, this
system of sense division was the rule rather than the exception.
Because the system of division into section units in the Judean Desert texts is so widespread,
any description of its nature should not be based on a single source (in the past the system of
1QIsaa [illustrations 1 and 21] 21 was often considered to be representative for all the Qumran texts)
or isolated remarks in rabbinic literature, but an attempt should be made to discover the guiding
principles behind the system as a whole. These principles were discussed in great detail by
Oesch, Petucha und Setuma, 198–248; idem, “Textgliederung”; Steck, Jesajarolle; idem,
“Abschnittgliederung”; Olley, “Structure”; Korpel–de Moor, Structure; the various studies
included in Korpel–Oesch, Delimitation Criticism, especially M. C. A. Korpel, “Introduction to
the Series Pericope” (pp. 1–50) and J. Oesch, “Skizze einer synchronen und diachronen
Gliederungskritik im Rahmen der alttestamentlichen Textkritik” (pp. 197–229). See also earlier
studies by Bardke, “Die Parascheneinteilung”; Perrot, “Petuhot et setumot”; and Siegel, Scribes of
Qumran, 46–79.
b. Technique of denoting section units
192 L. Blau, Papyri und Talmud in gegenseitiger Beleuchtung (Leipzig 1913) 15.